Oldest Flowering Plant

Paleontologists find fossil evidence of a new species of early flowering plant

08-01-2002
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Laura Tangley

Scientists in China have unearthed remains of the oldest known flowering plant--and they say that it probably lived underwater. At least 125 million years old, the fossil challenges a popular assumption that Earth's first flowering plants, or angiosperms, were terrestrial. How these plants evolved has puzzled biologists for centuries. Charles Darwin called the origin of angiosperms an "abominable mystery."